They rose to where their sovran eagle sails,They kept their faith, their freedom, on the height,Chaste, frugal, savage, arm'd by day and night
Against the Turk; whose inroad nowhere scales
Their headlong passes, but his footstep fails,And red with blood the Crescent reels from fightBefore their dauntless hundreds, in prone flight
By thousands down the crags and thro' the vales.
O smallest among peoples! rough rock-throneOf freedom! warriors beating back the swarmOf Turkish Islam for five hundred years,
Great Tsernagora! never since thine ownBlack ridges drew the cloud and brake the stormHas breathed a race of mightier mountaineers.